How to return title instead of value from string/list in Sanity?

Based on the documentation, I can see this is a common point of confusion! When you define a field with type: 'string' and a list of options in your schema, Sanity stores only the value, not the title/label.

The key thing to understand is that the title in list options is purely for the Studio UI - it's what editors see when selecting options, but it never gets saved to your database. Only the value is stored.

Here's an example schema:

{
  name: 'status',
  type: 'string',
  options: {
    list: [
      {title: 'In Progress', value: 'in_progress'},
      {title: 'Completed', value: 'completed'}
    ]
  }
}

When an editor selects "In Progress", your database stores "in_progress".

To display the title in your frontend, you have a few approaches:

1. Create a mapping function in your frontend code:

const statusTitles = {
  'in_progress': 'In Progress',
  'completed': 'Completed'
}

const displayTitle = statusTitles[document.status]

2. Use GROQ's select() function in your query to map values to titles:

*[_type == "myDoc"] {
  statusTitle: select(
    status == "in_progress" => "In Progress",
    status == "completed" => "Completed",
    "Unknown"
  )
}

3. Switch to objects instead of strings if you need both stored:

{
  name: 'status',
  type: 'object',
  fields: [
    {name: 'title', type: 'string'},
    {name: 'value', type: 'string'}
  ]
}

This is mentioned in the preview configuration documentation - titles in list options are display-only and not stored in the database. Most developers go with option 1 or 2 since it keeps your data clean and normalized.